business writing

It’s a hot niche where you’ll find industry moguls, start-ups, and innovators hustling to make their mark, generate revenue, and build a brand. (And that’s a good thing if you’re a freelance writer.)

Right now, Amazon-style success is what a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs are trying to replicate in their own niche.

From the solopreneur to corporate CEO, they’re interested in the day-to-day stuff about how to run a business more efficiently, manage people, improve product development and customer service, and establish a business model that will be profitable for the long term.

If you want to make money writing about business and entrepreneurship, there’s no shortage of sites that will pay you to write about it. Here are 15 sites that pay writers $50 to $500 per assignment, and cover a wide range of topics in this niche.

If you want to make money writing for one of these sites, study the guidelines, get familiar with the site and its target audience, and start pitching:

My freelance career was off to a dismal start. It was nothing but low-paying gigs, flaky clients, and race-to-the-bottom bidding on content mill sites. Then I discovered an unusual business writing niche that changed everything.

Two small business start-up clients asked me to write content designed to attract investors to help fund their business ideas.

But these entrepreneurs weren’t looking for angel investors with millions of dollars. They were going to get funding in a different way. And they needed someone who could blend copywriting and business writing to ramp up.

It didn’t take long to discover that I liked this unusual business writing niche. Write copy to promote a business idea, help entrepreneurs, and see an idea turn into a physical product or service.

And the pay? It’s been two years since I discovered this unusual business writing niche. It took a little work to understand it, but now I regularly earn $500 per hour.

Curious? I’ve carved out a niche writing crowdfunding campaigns. And so can you. Here’s what you need to know.

When I got a random phone call from a prospect about a proposal writing gig, I was curious.

“I need help writing an RFP [request for proposal] for a multi-year, multi-million dollar cyber security contract for a government agency,” the person said. “The deadline is in 30 days. Can you help me?”

You can make a lot of money doing this kind of work, right? That’s what I thought. But I had my doubts.

Months before this unexpected phone call, I did a lot of leg work to try and land proposal writing gigs and government contract work. And nothing happened.

I navigated clunky government websites and studied the jargon. I registered my writing business on sites like the System for Award Management and FedBizOpps where you can find contracts. I tried to land big contracts, then smaller ones without success.

It seemed like a lost cause. And then this prospect found me on one of those government sites for contractors.

I bid $12,000 for the work, and the client accepted. Here’s what the proposal writing process looked like:

There are a lot of opinions out there about what freelance writers do. One of the big ones I’ve heard lately is that business writers are selling their soul and writing crap just to fill their bank accounts.

In other words, we’re not ‘real writers’ like novelists. Business writers are just paid copywriting hacks.

Writing for businesses also ruins our writing chops for any ‘meaningful’ personal writing we aspire to, such as poetry, essays, or novel writing.

I used to think like this. For many years, I was a reporter who thought advertising writers were part of the Dark Side of the Force.

By contrast, I was finding facts, revealing truths, enlightening readers with vital news and information they needed. Good stuff!

Then I happened into my first business writing gig, ghosting blog posts for a startup’s CEO, and decided to give it a try. Suddenly, I remembered how my first career as a songwriter went wrong, all because of a similar misconception I had about ‘selling out.’

Last year, I got out my crystal ball and created a freelance writing forecast that identified 12 hot writing niches for the past year. (You can check and see how I did.)

That post was one of the most useful posts of the year, judging from the traffic it got, so I’ve decided to do a new forecast for 2017.

But this time, rather than good-paying types of writing, I’m calling out the hot trends you should know about to earn well in the coming year.

How you take advantage of these trends and freelance writing forecast will depend on the kinds of writing you like to do and types of clients you serve. These are top-level trends that will affect all of us, whether you’re into blogging, magazine writing, or copywriting.

I’ve included action items that explain how to take advantage of each of these trends in the coming year.

The freelance writing forecast looks bright

The short version: I’ve never been more excited about the opportunities for freelance writers than I am right now.